USGS and the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) formally announced their request for proposals to support the 2007 National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) Cooperative Agreements Program (CAP). With a total of $1.2 million spread across five categories, the 2007 NSDI CAP will fund an estimated 26 innovative projects in the geospatial data community. Each project aims to build new and improve existing and infrastructure necessary to effectively discover, access, share, manage and use digital geographic data.

In 2006, NSDI CAP awarded a total of 24 projects, totaling a projected $1.15 million. Individual projects like the web-based mapping service project being developed by Benton County, Arkansas, will incorporate county maintained Geospatial data directly into a web mapping tool that will be accessible to multiple partners and the general public.

To date the NSDI CAP awards have created collaborations at all levels of government, provided seed money to enable geospatial organizations to participate in national effort to implement the NSDI, promoted the development of standardized metadata in hundreds of organizations, and funded numerous implementations of OpenGIS Web Mapping Services and Web Feature Services. The twelve years of CAP awards have played a substantial role in promoting and disseminating the tenets of the NSDI to thousands of practitioners.

2007 NSDI CAP project grant awards are scheduled to be announced by USGS/FGDC contracts officer in March 2007 with obligated work to begin on each project by September 30, 2007. The full 2007 announcement and further information is available at: http://www.fgdc.gov/grants/2007CAP/2007CAPschedule.

See the full list of the 2006 NSDI CAP projects at: http://www.fgdc.gov/grants/2006CAP/index_html.

The FGDC of the USGS National Geospatial Program Office sponsors the CAP to promote the technologies, standards, best practices and organizational collaboration vital to data integration, partnerships for data investment and speedy delivery of geospatial products to support government.

For more information on this program, please contact Gita Urban-Mathieux: burbanma@usgs.gov or 703-648-5175. For additional information on FGDC NSDI CAP Grants please visit our website www.fgdc.gov or contact the FGDC Secretariat, c/o U.S. Geological Survey, 590 National Center, Reston, VA 20192; telephone 703-648-5513; fax 703-648-5755.